Personal View site logo
GH4 4K Panasonic video camera, official topic
  • 3230 Replies sorted by
  • hi guys, do you have any suggestions for pre ordering from european sellers, any news for release date? thanks

  • would it be best for UK buyers to buy from, say, US where there's no 30min limit?

  • i've emailed for a place on the Park Cameras afternoon in London, but have had no confirmation I've got a place. Hope it hasn't sold out?

  • yea I did to, OB but got no reply as of yet and I emailed a couple of days ago now.

    Re buying from the US. You might get stung on import fees and possibly have warranty issues if you need to claim. Just use 32gb cards ;-)

    I think out of all the lumix cams with the most chance of being hacked the GH4 is very near the top and removal of the 30 min limit will be one of the first things to go! ;-)

    ten

  • Yea, I've bought several items from the US and have no problem paying the import tax, I think it's worth doing as we really can't be sure if the GH4 can be hacked into.

  • @ten

    I think out of all the lumix cams with the most chance of being hacked the GH4 is very near the top and removal of the 30 min limit will be one of the first things to go! ;-)

    So you are volunteering to create this hack. That is very kind of you to take that task off of VK's plate. We will be kind back and give you at least one week after the camera is released to start asking when the hack will be done.

    If you think the GH4 has to have a hack to be usable then you should probably look at other cameras because I doubt a hack is going to happen in the near future since it hasn't happened for the GH3 yet.

  • I'm sold. After downloading Driftwoods street video and grading with FilmConvert, the GH4 has the look and latitude that I want. I WANT IT NOW!

  • @OBgene

    We'll also have GH4 on deals soon. :-)

  • @OBgene - my understanding is that wherever you buy the camera, as soon as you switch to a pal frequency, you're limited to the 30minutes again

  • 10 bit 444 2K from C4K (4096x2160) downloadable here (you can compare it with the earlier vimeo skin tone test download from last week)

  • Each frame is 18MB? Holy shiiiiiiiiiii-

  • @Vitaliy "We'll also have GH4 on deals soon. :-)" with free grip and battery for early orders? ;-)

  • @driftwood Wow, that's some grading flexibility!

  • @yak

    Have you actually tried grading it? Take the observation for what it's worth, but the 1080p material exhibits much the same limitations as the 4K originals. The more pertinent question now may be the quality of the HDMI out.

  • @mpgxsvcd

    yea ill do that, thanks for your learned input.

    ten

  • I've been playing with the 444 script all day and the difference is subtle. It appears that the script does improve the image slightly in the darker areas of the image, not sure why. There is a bit more to work with and you can push it harder, but I suspect the time it takes may not be with it. Straight out of the can it pretty much rocks.

  • @fancydancer regarding the driftwood GH4 test video. I like the images produced by this camera, even better than my hacked GH2 with Moon T7, but something that concerns me is the "greenish" cast and "plastic" look on dark skin complexions. Same problem as the Sony F5/F55. You can see what I'm talking about on the black lady at 1:54. My other concern is the highlight fall off; for example the "hot" area on the left side of the guy's face at 0:27. Still, I think this is the perfect camera for the kind of work I do. At least until a better camera comes out.

  • It seems to me that the issues so far are hard to declare as real issues this early. No other GH has had this level of flexibility in terms of shaping the image so I don't think we'll be stuck with "greenish" casts or any such other issues once users understand how to make the proper adjustments.

    Everything is relative. So we have a bit more DR and still people will push the camera to it's limits and if that leads to some issues with highlights then people don't keep it in perspective relative to what we couldn't do before. We get more of everything but that never fully satisfies users. There's always more, more, more... 11 stops, 12, 14, 16... 8Bits, 10Bits, 16Bits... There's no end to it unless we change our attitudes a bit and get a bit more reasonable in our expectations.

    It's like people haven't stopped to accept the amazing thing that we have a 4K camera for under $2,000.00!!! 10Bit HDMI is also nothing to sneeze at. It goes on and on. This is pretty close to the very Holy Grail many have been asking for the last 5 years.

  • @mjfeliciano comment belongs in Panasonic skintones look like Mattel action figures flame topic

  • That DXO score doesn't surprise me. The Still quality is better than the 7D I own at up to ISO 800 and very close to 3200. Its an outstanding sensor and processing. It is the best sensor ever in a m43 camera according to DXO. The footage coming out of it has a wow factor that I can only remember after seeing the best hacks in the GH2 in good light. However this footage is even better than the best hacks and in 4k.

    The quality this camera "from the footage I have seen-tweaked" achieves is better than 99% of the cameras we have ever had under 15k or maybe more $ before today. Panasonic has delivered an un-crippled masterpiece of hardware. There is really no real limitation for you to go create something cinematic and beautiful.

    If you don't perform with this camera the only feature or spec that is lacking is your talent. Go read some books or take some classes, another camera won't fix that.

    And if you still don't like the 4:2:0 then go get a Shogun recorder and get your 4:2:2 10 bit.

    The only things I can think of a GH5 improving is make the sensor a perfect 4k or 8.84 MP for even better DR and low light and up the frame rates in 4k and 1080p as fast as possible for good slow-mo without line skipping.

    Counting the days, hours, minutes for my GH4 to ship.

  • This evangelical language, complete with Holy Grail invocations, has been heard many times before. In the mini-DV era, many would-be filmmakers routinely asserted that there were "no more excuses", and that the format surpassed 16mm. Sounds absurd now, but many believed it, in particular those who had done little or no filmmaking.

    For ultra-low budget dramatic filmmaking, production value(much less resolution) has never been a deciding factor, so in that sense there's never been an "excuse", if all a feature film requires is a camera. You could have made your no-budget masterpiece any time in the last 20 years. No need to wait for your GH4 to ship.

    For non-dramatic filmmaking, it's hard to understand why anyone would need 4K at this time -- even assuming the GH4 delivers anything like 4000 lines, which is highly improbable -- but there's no arguing with somebody whose mind is made up.

    As for some of the wilder claims above, it might help to actually review the footage available from cameras <$15K before making such statements.

  • @jrd Yep, no arguing with someone who's mind is made up. Was the self parody intentional?

  • And something else that pops up ... from talking directly with the Panny folk at NAB yesterday ... there is no difference whatever in the output from the in-cam mini-HDMI port and the "full-size" HDMI of the YAGH unit. Other than (naturally) one's "mini" and one's "full-size". They just shook their heads over concerns that the YAGH is needed to output the full 4k signal ... noting there are NO image processing capabilities in the YAGH. It has the audio in's/level-controls and the "mechanical" conversion of the HDMI out into the four-out SDI plugs. That's it.

    The full-size HDMI in the YAGH is just hardwired into the output of the mini-HDMI of the camera.

    And, btw ... they were openly speculating how long it would be before indie camera accessory companies created other things like the YAGH ... as in, how many months till someone else has say a battery-powered unit similar to the YAGH but without SDI ports (to fit the battery in) ... all sorts of things.